Sandqvist Alva Black Bag (and others)

At the minute, I choose to use a pretty stupid bag for carrying stuff to and from work. It’s a free, cream tote bag that my missus got from some course or other that she went to, and it says “BOOKS ARE MY BAG” on it, in bright orange letters.

I know. I’m a knob head.

Regardless, I do work with books all day, puns are funny and it actually looks decent. It is starting to matter though, now that I am having to carry loads more stuff to work, that a tote bag – or even my little Kanken – aren’t really up to the task of intensive, day-in-day-out, work carrying duties. Especially if you take as much to eat at dinner time as I do.

Thankfully, The Liquor Store have got some excellent bags in from Sandqvist. That ‘Alva‘ one is like something some lux-Goth commando would have worn on night operations in Norway during the early stages of WWII, before going to watch The Cure and not cry. Which is always a good thing.

The ‘Stig‘ is a yellow canvas fare that will fire up your rig to the point where you could almost legitimately describe it as ‘lit’. The drawstrings and statement colour make it a nice informal alternative to the others in stock, but it’s still got all the organised shit inside; such as a laptop sleeve and that.

A third and decidedly more grown up option is ‘Alex‘, which is available in a ‘cognac’ colour. Have you ever had cognac? It’s rank. But it is the kind of drink you have after a massive meal of chateaubriand and business deals, whilst smoking a fuck-off cigar once the women have pissed off. So for those kind of connotations to be used to describe such a cool looking messenger-come-briefcase, is a shrewd touch of seriousness, belying you’re carrying only a cuppa-soup and a bag of crisps in £265 worth of vegetable tanned leather.

I don’t even know why vegetable tanned leather is a good thing, but it should keep the vegans happy.